


Homing Pigeon

by cohobbitation



Category: Watchmen
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 10:40:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17938244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cohobbitation/pseuds/cohobbitation
Summary: You only wanted to be close to him. You wanted that to be enough.You graze past him and he whips around. His eyes flash past yours, turn back, and lock on.He could just as well have called himself Peregrine Hawk, for how quickly he strikes your heart out of thin air and clutches it for his own.





	Homing Pigeon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etherati](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/gifts), [Not_You](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/gifts), [daylilymoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylilymoon/gifts).



> To the old gold standards I’ve been reading and rereading over the years. Happy tenth anniversary of the Watchmen movie, kinkmeme and all that it entails being a thing. This one’s for you.

He knows you from sense-memory. Even after eight years, it is vain to pretend. His head comes up, he goes taut as you pass him on the sidewalk, heart hammering in your chest, nothing showing on your face. You only wanted to see him. You cannot touch him now, but you only wanted to be sure.

That he was still there.

That he still knew you.

Oh _god_ , he still knows you, and your pulse picks up into a high whine — why did you think he would not know you, why did you think he would not _know_ —

He whirls on the pavement, rain and neon of the normal world shrieving apart around him, and he knows you like he knows the hammering of your heart in your ears. Owls hunt by hearing, don’t they? You have given yourself away. Miss Jupiter is ahead of him on the pavement, pulling away from him, and she does not know she’s lost him.

He turns back for you, so quickly, and takes your hand. Grabs on like you will evaporate away. His forefinger, middle finger, is stroking your pulse in your wrists. You are gripping his hand like it’s 1967 again, 1972 again, for dear life, and you’re dangling off a building and his wingspan is the only thing keeping you from oblivion —

“You dropped—you dropped,” Daniel Dreiberg says, on this street, valiantly trying to give this stranger a cover story. You don’t know what he’s pressing into your palm; something from his own pocket. His eyes plead _Come back to me, come back to me._ Scream _Come back home._

You will. God help you, you will. 

His eyes saccade over your ruthless, ruined face, and he’s almost yipping, keening like a thing stabbed. You want to curl up, hide, spare him from your hideous visage and all that you mean for him. He’s so _pretty._ He could fade into this crowd. Well fed and well heeled and unconcerned, so far above this piteous city. 

Maybe this filthy world does not pain him anymore, so close to the sky as he is. Maybe you should have let him go. You tried to.

But you don’t get there in time to stop him. You watch him fall in love again, thirty storeys in a heartbeat, and you can’t comprehend it but it’s all that you want: that he should know you to your filthy core and want you all the same.

Your hand tightens on his. You are in his clutches now, and in the wild shrieking instant before impact you wonder if you ever left them. Too long, too long, the two of you linger. Traffic begins to stare.

_Oh Daniel, my Daniel._

He is slipping out of your grasp. The current takes him, and his eyes are begging you the whole way to come after him. He has bitten his lips so red. So red, why has he never hidden his lips?

 _Come after me,_ Daniel Dreiberg mouths, _tonight. Please, tonight._

 _Yes,_ Walter Kovacs whispers into nothingness, as Nite Owl’s index finger slips away from his. _Tonight. Eleven._

You can feel your face convulse, and there is nothing to hide you. Rorschach is gasping for air, hit like a freight train, deposed like a king. How could you ever have been so vain, to think you could stop wanting him?

(How could you ever think he would ever stop wanting you?)

He is committing you to memory, twice, three times, as if the first singe of recognition wasn’t enough to mark you for the entirety of this life and well into the next.

He is still staring when passerby cut into your line of sight and rip the two of you apart. Ahead, you can hear Miss Jupiter call his name, all unawares.

You don’t hear him answer.

_Tonight. Eleven._

It’s hardly eight. 

You turn for the Nest, the echo of his ungloved hand burning on your own, and yield to the pull of every instinct you have ever tried to drown. 

You know the way home. You know the way home. God, you cannot forget the way home.

You’re halfway there before you realize you have been running all along.


End file.
